Post-Wedding Fun
by Sarah1281
Summary: Marius completely misunderstands when his father-in-law takes him aside right before he goes off on his honeymoon to tell him of his secret past. Though, to be fair, how ELSE could he possibly take being told that his father-in-law had spent nineteen years in prison than as a threat if he hurt Cosette? Modern AU.


Post-Wedding Fun

Disclaimer: I do not own _Les Misérables_.

Marius Pontmercy was the happiest man in the world.

Most people would think that seeing a girl on the subway once (and with a man she had seemed very fond of and whom Marius had been greatly relieved to learn was her father) was not a good or even realistic way to begin a relationship. Certainly his friends had made so much fun of him that even he had started to wonder if they were right.

Whenever that had happened, he turned his iPod on and listened to James Blunt's 'You're Beautiful' on repeat. His friend Éponine had offered to help him find his dream girl. It was made more difficult because he didn't know her name or anything else about her (including if she was single) and the picture he had discretely snapped wasn't very good so he had almost refused the offer. It seemed kind of creepy and stalker-ish, after all, but he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her for _months _on end and that was kind of a problem so he figured it was either take Éponine up on her offer or seek out some therapy.

He thought that finding the girl might be cheaper.

Plus all of that had been making him feel like a stalker and he hadn't even _done _anything and so he decided that it was worth a shot. He had faith in Éponine and her mysterious connections but she didn't have much to go on and so he didn't expect anything to come of it. What would be the harm of trying and failing to find the girl? Other than wasting Éponine's time, which she had taken as a challenge when he had tried to warn her, he couldn't see a downside.

And if Éponine found her for him…Well then maybe he'd be able to stop wondering. His friends might have thought it was stupid (such supportive friends he had sometimes) but they all agreed that he was the kind of person who would obsess forever. He was hoping to find his soul mate (or at least a girlfriend) but if they were just too different and could not make it work then at least he could finally move on.

Somehow, Marius still wasn't quite sure how or the legality involved, Éponine had found the girl for him.

Cosette Valjean.

Her name was like a prayer.

They had met properly (Marius feeling a little guilty for pretending that it was a coincidental meeting but not guilty enough to make her think that he was a creeper) and she had agreed to date him. His friends had taken to her immediately, even if they had sworn up and down that she was too good for him. Fortunately she had seemed to think that they were joking.

He didn't think that her father liked him very much but Cosette was his little girl and he'd seen enough TV and movies to not take it personally. And Valjean (who had conspicuously failed to ask Marius to call him 'Jean') had saved Marius from getting arrested at a protest that turned into a riot that Courfeyrac had dragged him to once. The others all acted like their ordeal in jail and the minor criminal charges they had beaten was no big deal (even Grantaire who seemed to enjoy the new chance to complain) but Marius knew that he would have freaked out _so badly_. Even if his rescue had only been for Cosette's sake, as long as Cosette liked him then Marius knew that Valjean would be nice. Or at least he was pretty sure.

And Cosette's extensive extended family really liked him, even if her father more tolerated him than anything. Cosette was any only child but Valjean had a sister with _seven _children all at least twenty years older than Cosette with spouses and children and everything. One of the oldest ones was even expecting a grandchild soon, something he was not exactly looking forward to in his late forties. That made him wonder just how old Valjean himself was. He was younger than Cosette's Aunt Jeanne but he didn't know by how much. He looked like he was in his early fifties but that was highly unlikely given how old Cosette's cousins were and the fact that Jeanne and Valjean didn't seem to be half-siblings. All Marius knew for a fact was that men with white hair really shouldn't look like heavyweight champions.

Unlike Cosette, he had a small family. His cold, distant grandfather, his aunt who was such a non-entity that people often forgot that she existed, and his father who his grandfather had bullied into bringing Marius and coming to live in the mansion father and daughter shared. His father had never gotten along with his grandfather (though his grandfather was the one who picked the fights) and never really got over losing his wife, either, but he tried his best and Marius hadn't had a bad life.

Marius' family and Cosette's extended familyhad been happy when he and Cosette had gotten engaged. Valjean had _said _that he was pleased and he put on a good show (he gave Cosette three million dollars as a wedding present) but Marius had well-honed instincts and just couldn't quite believe the sincerity.

And now, the morning after the wedding and just a few hours before they left for their honeymoon, Marius knew that he was about to be proven right. Why else would Valjean show up, completely unexpected, looking like he hadn't slept and would rather gauge out his own eyes than be here? He had probably had nightmares about Cosette's wedding night. It wasn't like they had _waited _or anything but that was one thing Cosette had made him swear to never tell her father about. Not that he would – because who did that? – but he dutifully promised all the same.

"Hello," Marius said, forcing a smile. "We didn't expect you. Cosette's not up yet. Do you want me to go get her?"

Valjean shook his head. "No. In fact, it might be better if she never knew that I was here."

Oh, yes, Valjean was definitely going to threaten – please let it just be threaten – him. Probably with castration, too. Marius had certainly noticed he was probably the only family member either of them had who had not spoken longingly of a baby. He briefly entertained the idea of getting Cosette anyway (for surely Valjean wouldn't dare to try anything with _her _there) but he dismissed the thought. Valjean might _want _to do something but people just didn't go around maiming other people so he would be fine.

"Please follow me," Marius said, gesturing for Valjean to do just that and then indicated a chair in their main room.

Valjean silently took his seat and then stared down at his hands for a long moment.

Marius willed himself not to freak out. Just because the man could probably snap his neck without even trying was no reason to think that he _would_.

The silence stretched on but Marius, fearing what was to come, could not bring himself to break it.

Finally, Valjean looked up and turned haunted eyes to Marius. "I was in prison for nineteen years."

Marius' heart stopped and for a moment he wondered if he was going to die. He shook it off, though; he wasn't Joly. "I-I'm…what? I'm sorry but could you repeat that?"

To his horror, Valjean dutifully repeated, "I spent nineteen years in prison."

Prison.

Marius had gone to visit a prison once for extra credit back in high school. They hadn't been able to walk through any occupied cells as a prison guard had recently been nearly killed by a schizophrenic inmate who hadn't been taking their medication. Marius never had any sympathy for anyone who didn't take their medication for any reason other than not being able to afford it or otherwise not having access to it. Yes, yes, he'd heard all about the terrible side-effects but what was constipation and blurred vision compared to constant hallucinations?

The room they had been led to in the prison had contained a friendly young man who discussed life in the prison and patiently answered every question that they could think of (and as high schoolers, they could think of some pretty stupid questions). It wasn't until after the man had left that the warden told them that he was in for life because ten years ago he had violently killed someone. He had had a lot of problems, apparently, and since then he had pulled himself together and gotten his GED in prison. He was trying to get parole despite the initial sentence and the warden asked the group to raise their hands if they thought his man should get his parole.

Marius wasn't sure. The man had seemed very friendly (if he wasn't then someone else would have been chosen for that) but he had _violently killed someone_ and Marius hadn't ever met a murderer before. He looked so…normal. It was disconcerting.

That and he started to over-analyze the question, not wanting to vote wrong and look stupid. Was the warden going to look at those who raised their hands and give them a pitying look before telling them that they were wrong and this man was still dangerous and should be kept locked up forever? He feared that the warden would and he feared being seen as naïve far more than being seen as lacking in compassion.

In the end, only one person raised his hand and it was not him. The warden had not been trying to trick them and declared that he would have given the man parole. Marius felt ashamed.

He had watched Law & Order and some old prison movies. He had heard the jokes about not dropping the soap. But what did he _really _know about prison?

"W-why?" Marius managed to ask, cursing himself for the tremors in his voice.

"I know that, with my great wealth now, it may be hard for you to believe this but my family was very poor when I was younger. My parents were both dead before I was an adult. My father was collateral damage in a drive-by shooting and my mother quickly succumbed to cancer. We could not pay for treatment and she had no insurance," Valjean began.

Marius shuddered at the thought that someone he was connected to, no matter how tenuously, had just been randomly gunned down on the street. And to have someone just forced to _die _when there was treatment available…It was monstrous. Though this would have happened maybe forty or fifty years ago and the science was nowhere near what it was today, there must have been _something_ they could have done had the money only been available.

"My sister managed to get custody of me and I got a job as soon as I was able," Valjean continued. "She and her husband had seven children and things were alright for awhile but then her husband was in a fatal car crash. What could she do? She got a little money but not enough. I moved back in with her to save rent money and to help with the children. I had no college degree and I could not support myself and eight other people on my own."

"Could your sister not work?" Marius asked, frowning.

"The oldest child was eight when his father died and the youngest was one. They couldn't be left on their own and childcare for seven small children was way more than any wages Jeanne might have earned." Here he hesitated. "I…It was not enough. We had nothing."

"Was there no government assistance?" Marius demanded, feeling sympathy despite the as yet unexplained lengthy prison term. God, he had only been alive six years longer than the amount of time Jean Valjean had been in prison!

"Some," Valjean said vaguely. "Not enough."

"What did you do?" Marius asked reluctantly.

"I became a drug dealer," Valjean confessed. "I did not do so lightly but we had _nothing_. They were talking about taking the children away. I couldn't let it happen. I didn't hurt anyone, or at least no more than it hurts people to get them addicted and to enable them. They were trying to crack down on drugs. They gave me nineteen years."

The sentence was…surprisingly not surprising to Marius. 'War on drugs' often led to people get very long sentences for drug-related crimes, dealers especially. While some of his friends objected to this on the basis that it should be their own damn choice whether they wanted to smoke pot or do whatever other drug they chose, Marius had always been a bit…leery. He just couldn't understand the appeal and so didn't much care if he was not allowed to do something he had no intention of doing anyway.

He couldn't quite believe that Valjean had been a drug dealer, though. The man was a moderately successful CEO (nothing Fortune 500 but growing every year) and had built his business practically singlehandedly. How could someone like _him _possibly be a drug dealer?

"Really?" he blurted out.

"I could show you my mug shot," Valjean offered wryly.

"Th-that's quite alright," Marius stuttered. So he believed that it was true at least to the extent that he did not want to see pictures proving it.

Did he believe that Valjean hadn't hurt anybody? He wasn't sure. He didn't actually know any drug-dealers personally (but Éponine mentioned having an ex who had been one and she had nothing kind to say about him) but he always imagined them to be really shady individuals. Cruel and vicious, making people utterly dependent on them and then forcing them into prostitution or at least to sexually satisfy _him _when they couldn't pay. And, remembering something he'd seen in health class, mixing their drugs with all sorts of poisonous crap.

He _really _couldn't see Valjean being like that but apparently there was a lot about his new father-in-law that he didn't know.

But maybe he didn't. Maybe he just sold to people when they could afford it and didn't when they couldn't. That would be agony for those who could not pay and who committed all sorts of vile acts to get the money to pay for the drugs but that was only _partially _Valjean's fault as they could probably go elsewhere (especially if they came to him already addicted).

But even if he hadn't beat someone up or killed them for failing to come up with the money and was practically an angel (aside from his chosen criminal behavior), he was still in prison for _nineteen years_.

Everybody knew the cliché about going to prison to become a criminal. Nineteen years! He'd be wary of someone who had been there for _one _year.

"Why are you telling me this, sir?" Marius asked nervously. What possible reason could Valjean have to keep this hidden from the world (how he had managed that in this day and age, he couldn't tell you) and then tell Marius the day after the wedding? Was he hoping not to scare him away before the marriage took place? But he didn't even _like _Marius and it's not like he couldn't still get a divorce if this freaked him out so badly that he'd be willing to walk away from Cosette over it.

"My daughter has married you so now you and not I will be spending the most amount of time with her," Valjean explained. "In the unlikely event that this ever comes out or someone finds out and tries to blackmail you over it, I wouldn't want you to be unprepared."

"I can't believe that Cosette never told me!" Marius exclaimed. Yes, perhaps she didn't want to talk about it or make him think ill of her father or whatever but they were _married _now. He was family! Couldn't she have mentioned it sometime instead of making him have this conversation with her dad?

Valjean sighed. "My sister did not come to visit me in prison for _years _until the children were old enough to be left on their own and she never was able to come very often. When I was released from prison, it took her a long time to forgive me for what happened. I was only trying to help but I made things worse and child services did temporarily take a few of the children. It wasn't because she was a bad mother but she was just overwhelmed. She got the help she needed from her church but she couldn't help thinking that if I hadn't gotten arrested then none of that would have happened. And the children barely even remembered me since they were so young when I went to prison and all grown when I came out of it. They all love me and have forgiven me by now but I know just what it means to someone to have a drug dealer in their family. None of them…approve."

Marius blinked, unsure of where he was going with this and what it had to do with what he said.

"Cosette does not know," Valjean admitted. "I never have been able to tell her and I hope that she never finds out from any other source. I trust that she will not find out from you?"

"Of course not," Marius said so quickly that he practically tripped over the words.

Oh God. Cosette did not know. Valjean was coming here to tell him all about his terrifying criminal past and Cosette had no idea.

Suddenly his worries that Valjean was here to threaten him (at best) came back full force and seemed a lot less paranoid now.

He was brimming with questions, too, but he knew that he couldn't ask any of them. Who knew how Valjean would react? Who knew how _Marius _would react to the answers?

Did Valjean ever kill someone in prison? Did he ever stab anyone? Did he ever nearly kill anyone? Did he gets into fights a lot? Had he ever strongly considered killing someone? Was that how he met his strange police friend? Had Valjean ever been taken advantage of? Had he (and this seemed more likely) been the aggressor?

What would he do to Marius if he ever broke Cosette's heart?

"So now you know," Valjean said heavily. "Knowing this, do you desire that I refrain from seeing Cosette in the future?"

A test, of course.

Had things been different, Marius might very well consider a former drug dealer who had been to prison for _nineteen freaking years _to be a threat to Cosette but he had seen the two of them together too often.

It was like she was a mafia princess or something, despite the fact that Valjean was not actually in the mafia. It was sort of like Tony Soprano (or so he thought. He, unlike Bahorel, did not actually watch 'The Sopranos') in that he had left his life of crime behind him. No matter what else anyone could say about Valjean, he would die before he let anyone hurt Cosette.

And he would probably hurt Marius if he tried to do anything stupid.

"O-of course not," Marius replied, managing not to tremble too much. "See her whenever you like. We're all grown-ups here."

Valjean actually pretended to be _surprised_."I thank you for your understanding, son."

Marius wiped his hand on his sweatpants before he took the offered hand and then Valjean was gone.

Marius's heart rate still hadn't returned to normal by the time that Cosette got up and started double-checking that they had taken care of everything. Marius tried to help even though he knew that if anything hadn't been done the first time Cosette would have found it the first five times she double-checked.

"Are you alright?" Cosette asked finally when she stopped to take a breath. "You look pale?"

"I'm fine," he lied. "I just _really _need this."

Cosette smiled and told him that she needed this, too, while Marius plotted out how to never be alone with his terrifying father-in-law ever again.

Review Please!


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